A leading Canadian newspaper is demanding that the government of Ontario compel Catholic schools, which receive public funding, to allow gay-straight student clubs and alliances.

“The Catholic schools have the right to their beliefs about homosexuality,” according to an editorial in The Globe and Mail,which ranks second among Canadian newspapers in circulation. “But they are public schools and they do not have the right to insist on a second-class status for students who identify as homosexual, or who simply have questions about their identity, or who have gay or lesbian parents. They need to try a little harder to make religious belief and equality work together.”